***2005 Tour 1 Updates***
May 4, 2005 Southwest Texas hailstorm
One idea for a "down day": head to the U.S./Mexican border!
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| The group elected to chase a Davis Mountain storm. | Slushy hail turns the landscape into a winter wonderland! | Cars buried to mid-axle in the slush! | SLT folks having fun! |
May 8, 2005 Central Kansas Severe Thunderstorms
The group targeted central and southern Kansas within the base of a weakening and departing upper-level trough. Vertical shear proved too weak for sustained rotating storms but ample instability and strong surface forcing generated a backbuilding line segment of severe thunderstorms. The day was capped off in northwest Wichita with a photogenic LP storm!
Figures and Pictures:
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| A menacing cloud base looms overhead. | High-based funnel cloud dangles from cloud base. | Another itty-bitty funnel! | Weak landspout. |
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| A flared laminar base. The next pictures show hail and the nice LP storm northwest of Wichita at dusk. |
May 10, 2005 Grand Island, Nebraska supercell
The group intercepted a high-based, albeit long-lived and fairly photogenic, supercell from its inception northwest of Grand Island. This storm produced several landspouts but never produced a mesocyclonic tornado. Images will be posted later.
May 11, 2005 Southwest Nebraska Supercell/Tornado
A large upper-level trough developed over the Rockies, overspreading the central and southern plains with strong southwesterly flow aloft - a classic pattern for tornadoes. Despite the presence of a favorable large-scale flow regime, a very complex environment developed: a surface low intensified all day in eastern Colorado, preventing the dry line from moving east. A strong surging dry line would have lifted the moist, potentially unstable boundary layer air, giving rise to numerous severe thunderstorms. Instead, most of the warm sector remained capped and storms were only able to develop close to an east-west frontal boundary near the Kansas-Nebraska border. These storms promptly moved northward, crossed the boundary into the cold air and died. This left only two viable targets: (1) the upslope region of far southwestern Nebraska and northeastern Colorado where strengthening southeasterly flow was lifted up hill and initiated supercells and (2) western Kansas where the dry line finally punched eastward close to dark once a significant upper-level disturbance ejected into Colorado from the base of the larger trough. The team, having chosen to play the more highly sheared environment close to the boundary, wound up heading west to intercept the southwestern Nebraska storms as they crossed the front. The results are shown below!
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| Truncated cone tornado forms next to the group along Hwy 61 between Benkelman and Enders, Nebraska! | Another shot as the van moves away from the tornado's immediate environs! |
Roger's account of the May 11 event follows:
Left Kearney mid morning headed south towards Stockton, Kansas. When we arrived it was 81/68 with a nice southeast wind early afternoon. We watched as soft towers would go up and get sheared over. We ended up chasing the cell that was tornado warned northwest of Stockton. These cells were high based, and not very organized. As they crossed front, they became even more elevated and did not much of anything.
Mid afternoon we blew of this junk and headed west to the triple point as cell exploded there. Same ones Brad Carter was on. We arrived near Benkelman and came over a hill to catch a glimpse of a weak skinny tornado west of town. The storms looked linear somewhat with a shelf cloud racing northeast. Updrafts were visible behind the shelf. Then something weird happened. My temp and dewpoint went from 63/59 to 71/64 in a matter of 1 minute. All of a sudden an updraft base starting rapid cascading motion, then rapid anticyclonic twisting and turning. Then a loud waterfall sound formed and a few seconds later a tapered cone funnel formed almost overhead. As quick as all the happened, less than a minute, a debris cloud formed in a field just to the southwest of the van. RFD hit the van on the NORTH side of the tornado, which we determined WAS anticyclonic!!!!! We blasted north away of this northeast moving tornado as condensation developed to the ground. Our view out the west side of the van was one of condensation lifting with multiple vortices twisting and turning as debris, old corn stalks and tumbleweeds went flying up and rapidly rotating around the vortex! This tornado was no more than 100 yards from us and closing. We drove at a fast pace to get away from this tornado and managed to get a quarter mile away and we stopped. It immediately dissipated as the funnel rapidly vanished. This entire sequence happened in 3 minutes! We are still piecing all of our video together to see exactly what transpired with this tornado.
